


Stars and Sorrow

by Ladybmorebelle



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), Doctor Who
Genre: AU, Crossover, F/M, First Time, Loss, M/M, Painting, Time Travel, atomwave
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-12
Updated: 2017-11-12
Packaged: 2019-02-01 10:34:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12703212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ladybmorebelle/pseuds/Ladybmorebelle
Summary: There's someone else on the ship. Brief moments of learning how to love again.





	Stars and Sorrow

It all started with paint on the floor.

The waverider, aside from Rip’s carefully constructed office, had always been dull, bland shades of grey and blue blurring into an anonymous, cold tin can. A few of them had added little touches to their bunks - knick-knacks they swiped from their favorite eras, a prized weapon here and there, odds and ends of machinery and metal. But there was still a sameness to it all; in the green glow of the timestream the ship was without an aesthetic identity.

But there, under Mick’s boots, and in footprints left by the Atom suit, were swirls of paint. Cerulean. Ochre. Vibrant, fiery gold. 

And the paint sparked something in them - a simmering passion, a silent scream - and even though the daily business of saving the world between bouts of boredom remained the same, they were, somehow, changed. 

Mick kept stealing liquor from Rip’s stash. He drowned the echoes of the callous time masters, whispering in his fractured mind, with the peat and herbs of whiskey. He uncorked bottle after bottle, but jerked back in alarm at the ethyl fragrance of a brown glass vessel filled with lye. 

Ray could’ve sworn he heard crying in the night, and it was unlike any sorrow he’d ever heard - there was madness in it, like the crashing of surf upon heartless stone. His sleep disturbed, he huddled around his morning cup of coffee, filling another for Rip, who seemed exhausted. Washed clean, purged, and empty. There was a smudge of blue pigment in his hair.

Sara, stumbling into the mess for a glass of water after a training session, heard voices, and smelled the buttery sweetness of bread. She was reminded, viscerally, of a little cafe in Star City, the one with the French pastries and the flickering candles, the one that looked like it was a painting, dripping with color. A cafe where she had kissed a nameless, beautiful girl and warmed herself in the fire of her blushing cheeks. Sara sought out the voices and found Rip - and for a moment there was a shimmer of a man with red hair, a glisten of tears, but he was gone - and Rip smiled, alone, and reached for her for the first time. 

Ray, in a perverse desire to add a little brightness to their antiseptic bunks, picked sunflowers and arranged them, every crew member with their own new lucky vase. He sneezed the whole time, but found an unexpected contentment in the glow of yellow and brown. 

The next night, he found Mick on the bridge, staring out into nothingness. Some nameless need, a deep wanting, made him steer the ship towards an electric sky - an uneventful night in Paris, in the 1800s, when there was no light pollution, when the heavens burned with celestial grace. 

They stood together, silent, in the dark. Ray put his hand on Mick’s shoulder.

“If you hug me -”  
“I know, you’ll kill me.”

Mick grunted.

Ray spoke quietly, “Might be worth it.”

A grunt again, and then his broad shoulders softened, all of his hardness sweetening around the edges. Ray didn’t hug him, not quite, but his thumb made circles on Mick’s back, right up to the stubble of the nape of his neck. Mick bowed his head and allowed himself to be touched.

“Who are you talking to at night?”

Sara’s head was on Rip’s chest, the two of them squeezed onto one bunk, bodies intertwined.

“Right now, I’m talking to you.”

She hit his chest, soft, demanding.

“Funny. You know what I mean - when you think I’m asleep. When you go to your office.”

“Just to myself.”

“And the other voice?”

“No one. A ghost.”

Ray and Mick could’ve sworn they were being watched. That first night, when Mick knocked on Ray’s door - when the impossible became possible, when they were joined in mutual grief, in all the loved ones they’d lost - they felt eyes staring out of the dark. It should have been terrifying, but the intent gaze of the shadows held nothing but love - love, and hope. Mick couldn’t help but feel that hope kindling inside of him, the smallest flame of maybe - maybe this, maybe yes, maybe Ray Palmer and his reckless smile and the feel of his body in a narrow berth. 

Ray shifted in his sleep, one hand reaching out, tentatively, like he was resigned to finding no one there to hold it. Mick took Ray’s delicate fingers in his thick palm; Ray sighed, pulled Mick down, and they slept a deep sleep of no longer being alone. The shadow smiled; the shadow cried.

Ray fiddled obsessively, always trying to invent some new piece of tech, trying to give the team a shining edge over anyone they might encounter plundering the mysteries of time. Mick watched him, warm, possessive, drinking beer, and thought, this man, yes. This man, and his genius - where madness and creativity converge. 

“If you tell anyone I like you, I’ll -”

“You won’t shave my head, Mick. You like my hair too much.”

And Mick - he was so often angry, sometimes almost psychotic in the ways he wanted to watch the world burn - and Ray thought, yes, this man. This one - a lover who will not break.

Ray made a stop in the jumpship and returned with his arms full of irises. Rip saw him, paled, put a hand to his heart. Ray arranged the flowers in Mick’s room, and they made love surrounded by the heady scent of bruised petals. They touched each other in a rage - pushing, grabbing, breathing heavy - and vases shattered in their frenzy. The room glittered in purple and pollen and glass.

Rip sat alone in his office, his glass filled with green liquid, the smell of anise and death in the air. Sara entered, poured herself a measure of absinthe, sat on his lap.

“Tell me about this ghost.”

“It was another lifetime. It was the past.”

“What do we care about the past?” She smiled down at him and traced her fingers along the scruff of his beard. “Haven’t we learned, by now, that all of time is happening, everywhere, all at once?”

“Well, yes...”

“So who’s this ghost?”

“A man I knew, once. A man I tried to save.”

Mick didn’t know how to be nice. They fought, a lot, and it was worth it when they didn’t know what else to say, didn’t know how else to be angry other than pressing their lips together and clutching at each other’s hips, dominance undone. He tried stealing stuff to make Ray happy - little gifts as clumsy tokens of affection - but Ray was happiest when he was in Mick’s arms, no pretense, chattering away. 

They kept returning to Paris, somehow, like all signs were pointing towards the starry sky over the Seine. Rip shook after each trip, just a fine trembling, and Sara held him, and Mick and Ray held hands, and it still smelled like paint and lye and anise and sunflowers and sex. 

Ray dragged Mick to the Louvre - and Rip looked away, he’d been there before - and they spent hours looking at paintings. Or Ray did, and Mick didn’t, because he was watching Ray look at the art and it was more beautiful than any painter could imagine. He pulled him into an alcove and they laughed together, kissing. 

It wasn’t until they got to the last display, the one they had both, somehow, been itching to see, that they felt a sharp pain in the hollow places below their hearts. The room was illuminated with vibrant color, blues and greens and golds, fields, flowers, stars. And they felt the presence that had been living in the shadows of their ship, they heard the voices, the manic crying, and there, right there on the wall, was a portrait of the two of them. 

“How -”

“Time, haircut. It’s weird.”

Back on the ship, Mick gestured to Rip with a small nod of his head, pulling him aside. 

“How was the art, Mr. Rory? Steal anything?”

It was bravado, and it was a lie - Rip could tell by Mick’s firm stance and terrible compassion what he was about to say.

“You’ve gotta stop doing this, Hunter. Bringing him on the ship. You can’t save him.”

“You - you thief, you pyromaniac - are you trying to tell me what to do?”

“Yes. I am. Not just a thief - Chronos, remember? I know more about time than you do.”

“In all its wibbly-wobbliness. I get it.”

“You gotta put it away.”

And he tried. He threw himself into the adventures, into the exhausted hours with Sara, the lovemaking, moments of laughter stolen like cookies out of the jar. Mick watched him, and he watched Ray, who seemed to have grown a new shell of confidence, a toughness, a security in knowing he was loved. He watched Sara, and the small twinges of hurt when Rip disappeared into drunkenness. 

Mick decided to be nice.

They went back to Paris. He told Ray to pack a blanket, a basket of fabricated food, and they set up on a hill with Rip and Sara, with an unlikely picnic, and they talked until the sun went down. They lay with their heads together, staring up into the night sky, and they made a kind of peace, there, in the dark. 

“His name was Vincent.”

Rip’s voice was so quiet that it was barely there.

“Your ghost?” Sara reached out, twining her fingers with Rip’s clenched hand. 

“Yes.”

“We’ve all loved somebody we lost.” 

“Mm,” Mick’s hand tightened on Ray’s.

Ray turned to Mick and smiled.

“But we can love again.”

“It’s hard, Mr. Palmer.”

“It is,” and Sara rolled towards Rip, kissed him on the rough angle of his jaw, “But I think it’s worth it, don’t you?”

Rip had already lost too many people - he didn’t remember how to cry. They lay there, under the stars, hands gripping and holding on, and made a silent covenant - a promise to themselves, to each other, to love and be loved. 

When they got back to the Waverider, the paint was gone.

But the ship was full of flowers.

**Author's Note:**

> Just got into Atomwave and found the challenges from last year - this is the AU challenge. Vincent and the Doctor is my favorite DW ep, if you couldn't tell...


End file.
